Brer Bear and Brer Rabbit go hunting

Here's our drawings and summaries (J's above, Zoo Boy's below) of the last story of our week, "Brer Bear and Brer Rabbit Go Hunting," during which Brer Bear is tricked out of his entire day's take by that crafty Brer Rabbit, who pretended to be a dead rabbit in the road (twice!), and causing Brer Bear to put down his game bag (which Brer Rabbit then, of course, took) to go back and get the "other" dead rabbit in the road.

Here's my drawing -- for some reason I couldn't get my bear to NOT look like a squirrel....

More trickster tales next week!

birthday fun

Yesterday afternoon we got together with friends for a walk at our favorite dog-and-kid-walking area, because that's what I most wanted to do on my birthday.

It was a great day to be outdoors -- a bit breezy and cool, very Fall-like. The dogs, the kids, and the adults all enjoyed themselves!

Then a cake at home with the family (above), and drinks and the traditional "Mouse Mousse Cake" with friends (below). Pretty much a perfect birthday! I think I'll stay 45 forever.

Brer Fox and Mister Trouble

J's drawing (above) and Zoo Boy's (below) of our 2nd story of the week, that of "Brer Fox and Mr. Trouble," where Brer Rabbit showed Brer Fox what old Mister Trouble looked like. He told the poor unsuspecting fox to go holler at the door of Farmer Brown's barn, which caused Farmer Brown's hounds to come bursting out the door and chase him. As he ran way with the hounds nipping at his tail, Brer Rabbit offered this advice: "You don't have to go looking for Mister Trouble, he'll find you."

My drawing, complete with mistakes in the summary, is below.

icecream and posters

We attended a local homeschooling group's "Ice-cream Social" today. Would have included photos of the rather large turn-out, but we don't know these folks real well yet, and I don't exactly have permission to publish photos of their kids. So you get to see photos of my kids instead!

In addition to eating ice cream (make-your-own-sundaes) the kids also worked on posters of summer memories. Much to my surprise, both of my kids were willing participants! (Despite the fact that both had asked, at least twice, "do we have to?" to which I responded "no".)


J's finished poster. He painted a flag and some fireworks depicting the 4th of July, the "Oliver" logo from our musical, and a sign promoting the dance studio where he took dance camp. He also painted the state of Maine, then put a red "x" through it (and an unhappy face next to it), since we'd had plans to go to Maine that fell through. Wise guy.


Zoo Boy shows off his painting of our lake beach, which clearly was the high point of his summer.

After eating and creating, some of us headed outside to the adjoining play scape and field and the kids ran around and got tired and sweaty.

It was a fun afternoon, we'll look forward to more activities with this group!

Brer Rabbit's house

First a warning: we're picking up the pace a bit with our curriculum work, so the posts are bound to be coming sort of fast and furious. Assuming I actually keep up with things, anyway....

I also decided that we need bigger pictures for these more detailed drawings. So you'll have to live with the new format.

As I mentioned yesterday, we're at the start of an African American cultural block, and we're starting with Trickster tales from that culture, which consist of Uncle Remus style stories, presented by Enki Education. The boys, having never heard Uncle Remus, are completely enthralled and can't stop re-enacting the events from the stories. Our first story was "Brer Rabbit's House," where that clever trickster, Brer Rabbit, tricked the other animals into doing all the work to build a community house, then further tricked them all into leaving him as the only resident. J (drawing above) drew Brer Rabbit tricking the other residents into thinking all that water he was spilling down the stairs was spit from a chaw of tobacco.

Zoo Boy (drawing above) drew all 3 of Brer Rabbits tricks -- shooting a shotgun (and telling the animals that was just the noise he made when he sat down); shooting off a cannon (and telling them that was his sneeze); and of course the water/spit trick.

My drawing (above), showing the first part of the story, where Brer Rabbit tricked all the other animals into doing all the work by spending his entire time measuring and marking everything.

When we got done with the drawings, J declared this to be the best year of homeschooling ever. Zoo Boy asked again and again all morning for another Brer Rabbit story. Needless to say, when it was finally story time, he was not disappointed.

here we go!

This year's official Not-Back-to-School photo, taken on our morning walk. After I took it, J said "Ok, now I'm excited about getting back to schoolwork!" I guess it's just not official until you pose for a photo!

Well, we're off and running! Or, actually, it's a bit more like a crawl. It's much better to ease into the school routine again rather than drop it on the kids like a bomb (especially for Zoo Boy who is not entirely convinced that summer should be coming to a close).

I've had a lot of questions from family, friends, and readers about how I manage to fit everything that we do into our day. I sort of approach the day in a series of "blocks".

First there is the early morning wake-up and breakfast block, which is from about 6:00am (when I get up, and when The Map Man leaves for work) until about 9:00 am (at which point we're all fed and dressed). During that block we arise, I take care of morning farm chores, and J gets up and gets going with his Sensory Integration work. While he's finishing that up, I get Zoo Boy up and moving, and after he's adjusted to being awake and present with us, I get him working on his SI work (as seen above) while I cook breakfast and get it on the table. Then we eat and the boys get dressed while I sneak a quick peek at my email if I haven't already found a minute to do that. That wraps up our early morning block.


We start our next block, the "schoolwork block" which last from about 9:00 to noon, by going for our morning walk, which also constitutes a large portion of our science program, in addition to providing some much-appreciated exercise. There's always something to discover. Today we found out that our vernal frog pool has gone completely dry (inspiring an interesting discussion about what happened to the frogs), we found a hawk feather (then heard a red-shouldered hawk calling nearby as we debated over what sort of bird it was from), and stopped to watch some tiny ants working together on the stalk of a plank as they chewed off a bit of leaf and carried it away to their nest.

When we get home from our walk, we do a spin-and-fold type activity to sort of ground all that exercise in our bodies. This fall, I'm singing a seasonal song called "Leaf Journey," modifying the words a bit so that it goes along with the actions the boys are doing -- they spin down the hall, then come back hopping, rolling, and crawling, depending on the verse. Then we finish out our movement portion of the schoolwork block by doing a cultural dance -- for this first two weeks we're working with the song "Go In and Out the Window" and doing a weaving sort of folk dance. (This is from the Enki Education Grade 2 cultural activities.)


We then move to our seat work. Since Tuesdays is the start of our curriculum work for the week, it's Journals day, so the boys work on an entry in their journals. The rest of the week, this time will be spent recalling the previous day's story, composing a summary of the story (which I'll write on a large pad of newsprint and post for us all to see), and drawing a picture from the story. (This is J's journal entry from today.)

(Here's Zoo Boy's journal entry. He's planning to continue it next week on the next page.)

Then we have a snack, and then, the rest of the week, we'll move on to writing out the summaries and doing math practice work. Today we just did the practice work, both boys had a math worksheet to fill out. They both really enjoy doing worksheets, and these were particularly easy since they were just review work. So they were done much quicker today than they will be in the future.

The last part of our schoolwork block is reading a new story and then the kids get to play for an hour or more, depending on how fast they got through the rest of the work. We're starting an African American cultural block, so we're reading trickster tales from that culture, which are the Uncle Remus stories. The boys have never heard stories about Brer Rabbit and Brer Fox before, and they were absolutely delighted by today's story. They immediately began acting the story out when I was finished telling it, transitioning very nicely into their play time.


Since we had such an easy schedule today, the boys had plenty of time to both play, and to do some reading, before we broke for lunch. Our afternoon activity block consists of classes and activities outside of our home, so the kids are resting in the car on the way to our afternoon location. Tuesdays they've got OT (Occupational Therapy), which we'll be leaving for shortly. Wednesdays we're checking out a new local homeschool group which has activities and field trips schedule all year. Thursdays it's Spanish class. And Fridays is gym class. We wrap up our afternoon activity block, which lasts from about 1:00 until about 4:00 by heading home, eating snack, and doing our evening farm chores together.

Then there's one more block -- the evening activities block, which lasts anywhere from about 4:00 on some days until bedtime on others. For Zoo Boy this is mostly just a free time to do whatever he wants, but for J it's dance classes and other organized activities. Mondays is Jazz class, Wednesdays is cooking the evening family meal, Thursdays is Modern Dance, Fridays is Ballet, Saturdays is Family Movie Night, and Sundays is Chorus.

In addition to the above, Saturday is a dance day (so more free time for Zoo Boy), Sunday is Family Day, and Monday is Homeschool Classes (our co-op day).

And that's how the fall will be going for us, in a nutshell! Not everything is starting this week, which is nice -- the start dates are all staggered so we won't have a full schedule until the last week of September. That will help ease us all into our new fall schedule, and help us really get back into the swing of things!

ready to roll!

I mean, don't they LOOK ready to jump back into schoolwork and more structured days?

There's been a lot of the above this summer. Just laying around and reading, or doing whatever (whatever is one of my particular favorites, actually). Or doing what they're doing to the left, just hanging out, being one with nature.

There's been some of this, too.

But, seriously, it's time to get back in the swing of things. Education on a more formal note. A bit more of a schedule to the way things run on a daily basis.

So, in preparation for our big first day not-back-to-school, we crammed as much fun as possible into the last few weeks of summer. There's been lots of social time with friends and family, there's been cook-outs, there's been games. There's been wandering through the woods and fields of CT searching for those elusive letterboxes.

There's even been searches in cemeteries....

There's been museum time and water play and experimenting with volume.

There's been exploring optical illusions.

And drawing our own. (Here's J's.)

But, really, we're as ready as we'll ever be to get back to school work. So I guess tomorrow is as good a day as any to start.

Which means I'll be back to blogging a bit more regularly, assuming the computer cooperates (it's sort of on hospice at the moment....).

So, "see" you soon!